


Piece By Piece

by CantStopImagining



Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Christmas, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 05:58:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5573407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CantStopImagining/pseuds/CantStopImagining
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Trish had feared that Jessica would fold back in on herself, disappear on a gust of wind and be gone for another six months, maybe longer. Maybe she’d never see her again at all. That was how it had panned out last time, and it had broken her heart. But Jessica hadn't disappeared. For now, anyway."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Piece By Piece

**Author's Note:**

> First of all I wanted to say a huge thank you for your support on my previous works in this fandom - it means so much and your comments are always what keep me going. I had hoped to get this done before Christmas but then a lot of Christmas fics popped up and I really didn't want this to be a 'festive' story but it panned out that way. Having said that, I'm not sure about the timelines and how they line up with the show, so apologies for that. Anyway, this is a Trish-centric piece. Another look at the aftermath of Kilgrave, but this one's a different universe (I suppose?) because I didn't want to just write the same story twice - that wouldn't have been fun for any of us :)

It’s almost the end of the year by the time it all ends.

The streets have been thick with snow for months. Not the kind kids play in, or the kind that’s featured on Christmas cards, but New York snow; sludge, thick with dirt and half-melted. It seems oddly fitting.

It’s been a long time since she’s felt this bad. Once it’s over, the last six months catches up with her. She died in the back of an ambulance. She almost died with someone else’s fingers tight around her throat. She shot herself in the head and the only saving grace was that there was no bullet. 

She’s had her life under control for so long that feeling it slip out of her grasp sends her reeling back into a place she doesn’t want to go. But she’s stronger now, and she holds on tight with the tips of her fingers, and she fights. 

Trish had feared that Jessica would fold back in on herself, disappear on a gust of wind and be gone for another six months, maybe longer. Maybe she’d never see her again at all. That was how it had panned out last time, and it had broken her heart. Each and every day she had found herself breaking apart just a little more, and even when she stopped calling, stopped trying to track her down, she didn’t stop hurting.

But Jessica hasn’t disappeared. For now, anyway. For now she is within reach, something that she can hold onto, even if she feels far away most of the time. She answers her calls, but she won’t come by for dinner, turns down offers to stay over. She’s gentle about it, and Trish knows she should stop pushing, but the truth is, she doesn’t want to be alone, and it’s as much about her own comfort and peace of mind as it is Jessica’s.

She doesn’t want to come across as over-bearing (a small part of her knows that she _is_ but she prefers to call it _concern_ ), but she can’t quite stop herself from checking in. She has Malcolm’s number on speed dial. It isn’t checking up and he isn’t reporting to her and it’s not like she’s spying, but it’s something, and it at least lets her sleep at night. It at least helps her to know that Jessica’s safe and not passed out on the streets somewhere in a puddle of her own vomit, or worse. Trish still feels funny that there is somebody else out there who cares about Jessica as much as she does, but she appreciates Malcolm, and is grateful that there’s somebody Jessica allows in, even if it isn’t her. If you can call it letting him in. He cleans around her, answers her phone messages when she’s too drunk to pick up, and sorts through her piles of paperwork. A glorified secretary, but he’s just happy to be helping. And he is helping; even if it’s just ensuring that Jessica is alive and breathing, it’s helping.

If Jessica won’t let her in, won’t let her be there physically, then Trish will have to help in some other way. She dives into her research, spends hours pouring over files and digging through boxes. Whenever she isn’t at work, she’s making phone calls and chasing leads, and consuming information from the boxes her mother delivered. Each tiny sliver of information she thinks ‘this might be it, this might crack the whole thing wide open’. It feels good to be absorbed in something, to stop thinking, to distract herself from the feel of being under Kilgrave’s control, of him getting into her head.

She isn’t a very good detective. Not compared to Jessica. She reaches the end of the last box and she has nothing.

_‘There’s more where these came from’._

The note sits in a drawer like a threat and Trish knows - has always known, from the moment she laid eyes on the first box - that she’ll do it, she’ll go to her again, if it means helping Jess. She always will.

(Then again, Dorothy knows that too, and therein lies the problem. Kilgrave was right about Jessica, about Trish being the only thing he could use against her. And Dorothy knows Trish would go to the ends of the world for Jessica.)

Jessica hates asking for help. She appears on the balcony one night in the rain, drenched and dressed head to toe in black.

“You could use the front door, just once, you know,” Trish says, letting her in and pulling the door closed quickly behind her, “you’re soaked.”

Shrugging out of her leather jacket, Jessica accepts the throw from the back of the couch when it’s handed to her, wraps it around herself like a cape. Her hair’s dripping.

“What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

Jessica shakes her head, “my apartment’s being patched up. I need a place to stay. Just a couple of nights.”

Trish exhales sharply, crosses her arms, “and you couldn’t have asked over the phone?”

“Thought this would be more dramatic,” Jessica smiles, and Trish feels like her heart is breaking.

Jessica refuses to take the bed. Of course she does; she’s Jessica.

Trish shoves the last of the boxes into the gym and tucks away the letter from her mother. She plumps pillows and fusses over Jessica’s make-shift bed and acts like the perfect host, ignoring the fact her fingers are trembling. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her.

“You’ve made the fortress even more… fortress-y,” Jessica says, leaning against the counter.

Trish glances at the extra locks, the new door system. She knows she’s paranoid, that the one person she most needed to keep out is dead, but it turned into a coping mechanism. Another lock, another video camera, another bolt on her safe haven. _No one touches me anymore unless I want them to._ (She _had_ wanted Kilgrave to, in that moment, she’d offered herself up to him. One word and she was his and that’s terrifying, even if he is dead and gone, that she could let herself be manipulated like that, even after everything, even after all that training.)

“Can never be too careful,” she says, smoothing out the comforter.

“Has Simpson—“

“No,” she says quickly, “I haven’t heard from him.”

*

It isn’t like when they were flatmates and her heart sinks the first morning when she wakes up and finds Jessica gone. She comes and goes as she pleases, isn’t tied to anything or anyone. She leaves an empty bottle of whiskey between the sofa cushions, and didn’t bring a change of clothes.

Trish gets dressed. She cleans up after Jessica, folding the sheets up, piling the pillows away. Keeping organised, ticking things off her mental to do list helps. It’s always helped. She goes to work, and she isn’t particularly surprised when she returns to find the apartment empty. Disappointed, but not surprised.

She promises herself she won’t wait up, won’t spend the night worrying. Jessica’s a grown adult, and she is _not_ her mother.

When Jessica stumbles in at 2am, fumbling with the door and cursing under her breath, Trish is still on the couch, pretending to watch television.

“Shit.”

“Jess,” Trish greets, forcing a smile, pretending she hasn’t been waiting up the whole night for her, “I was just going to bed.”

“Sure you were,” Jessica mumbles. She stinks of cheap alcohol and her eyes are hollow and dark. She looks worse than she did when Kilgrave was still alive.

Trish sighs, “don’t push me out…”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Jessica snaps. She must see the hurt that drifts across Trish’s expression, the way her jaw tightens, because she immediately apologises, “shit, I’m sorry, okay. I’m sorry. I just… I needed to get away.”

Trish busies herself with organising the couch, transforming it back into a bed for the night. She tries to ignore the tense feeling in her shoulders, the way she drops the pillows into place with too much force. Her mother’s voice echoes in the back of her head: _this isn’t a hotel, Jessie!_ She feels sick, tries to bury it.

“Well, goodnight,” she says, instead, but hovers around, waiting for Jessica to shuck her boots off. She has an urge to wait to tuck her in, to press her lips to Jessica’s head. Maybe even to watch her sleep, like she did the night Jessica broke her rib.

After a moment, she goes to bed, Jessica still at the kitchen island, pouring herself another drink. Trish doesn’t sleep.

*

“What the fuck…?”

Trish almost drops the glass ornament she’s holding, jumping out of her seat, “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“What’s all this?” Jessica drops into the couch, propping her feet up on the coffee table, “I thought you didn’t buy into all this crap? You hate Christmas.”

As a child, Christmas meant posing for photographs in santa outfits that were far too short for a teenage girl, being forced to spend hours working on a It’s Patsy! Chrismtas special, and not being allowed to eat Christmas dinner. Oh, Dorothy spoiled her with expensive gifts and designer clothes, but it was all for show. It was all trying to buy her affections. Like a $300 handbag could make up for a year of beatings.

After they’d left, for years she’d stubbornly avoided Christmas. She and Jess did their own thing - it was still a day off, after all - but they never followed traditions. They didn’t trade presents or eat a big Christmas meal. They had no family to invite over.

“I just thought, a new year, without— I thought that for once we might have a reason to celebrate this year. I know it’s tacky, but… I thought it would be kind of nice to just be normal for once.”

She’s aware that she sounds more like the desperate teenage girl Jessica grew up with than her sensible grown up best friend. She’s chewing on her lip, an awkward childish habit she never quite grew out of. Jessica’s eyes look glazed over. It’s only midday. Trish wonders how much she’s had to drink already today.

“Sure,” she says, stiffly, “I guess we can try.”

It isn’t quite how Trish had imagined it, but they spend the rest of the afternoon dressing the tree, arranging festive candles, and sprigs of holly and mistletoe around the apartment. Jessica spends most of the time complaining, but Trish can’t help but notice the smile on her face when it’s all finally done, and they switch the lights on. It’s not a huge commercial tree covered in expensive decorations like the one Dorothy had, or the ones that Trish spent a childhood posing under or around. It’s reasonably sized, but a bit wonky, and the ornaments don’t match, and the lights aren’t spread out evenly, but it’s their tree, and Trish loves it not despite but because of the imperfections.

“We used to have a tree when I was a kid,” Jessica says after a long while of sitting on the couch not talking, “my mom and dad kept all these little ornaments that Phil and I made as kids… really ugly stuff, but we’d put them on the tree every year.”

Trish reaches across and touches her leg gently, “my mom paid someone to come in and decorate ours,” she says, and when Jessica starts to laugh, she joins in. It really is ridiculous. She’s so glad she’s far enough away from that life that she can laugh about it.

“I’m sorry for being an asshole.”

“You’re not an asshole,” Trish rolls her eyes, “an asshole would just walk away, cut me off, and never answer my calls and—“

“And a bunch of things I have done,” Jessica reminds her.

“Yeah, but not this time,” she says gently, rubbing her leg, “I get it, I do. Why do you think I paid for you to go to that therapist?”

Jessica scoffs, “I am not going back there. It’s a waste of money.”

 _Yeah, that’s why I still hear you muttering street names under your breath,_ Trish thinks, but doesn’t say. 

“I don’t expect you to. But I also don’t expect to be pushed away again. You broke my heart the last time you know?”

The look that flashes across Jessica’s face tells her that she does know, and Trish feels guilty; she didn’t mean to cause Jessica any more pain. If anything, that was the opposite of what she wanted. She reaches for Jessica’s hand and holds it tightly in her own, surprised when Jess doesn’t even flinch. She’s never been good at intimacy, at physical contact.

“I won’t leave,” Jessica says, staring her straight in the eye, “I promise.”

*

Trish answers her door to a Christmas card from her mother, and a bouquet of flowers that she dumps straight into the trash. She knew it was a mistake letting her in, letting her know where she lives. It throws her off all day, and she spends her journey into work paranoid that she’s being followed, flinching at every loud noise or passerby who walks too closely. She hates that she’s let her get under her skin again. One demon disappears and is replaced by another one, and she feels like she’s coming full circle, like everything she spent years working at is crumbling down around her.

She gets to work and by the end of the program she’s feeling normal again. She can do this. She’s done it before. She’ll do it again.

When she gets home, Jessica’s passed out on the couch, and she’s never been more glad to see her, even if she’s unconscious and stinks of booze. Trish wants to crawl in beside her like she used to when they were kids, but doesn’t. She drapes a blanket over her, and starts making dinner.

*

“I invited Malcolm for Christmas,” Jessica says, throwing herself onto the couch on December 23rd. She’s spent the day working on a case, disappearing first thing in the morning, and only just returning, her camera slung around her neck and her fingers white with cold. At least she left a note, “I hope that’s okay.”

Trish is taken aback. In all the years they’ve been friends, Jessica has never invited anyone over for, well, anything. She doesn’t make friends. She’s had exactly three romances - if you can call them that - in the time Trish has known her, and she’s never met any of them besides Luke. And that wasn’t exactly under the best of circumstances.

“Uh, great! So are we… doing like the whole ham thing, and gifts…?”

Jessica shrugs her shoulders, stretching out on the couch like a cat, “sure, whatever. I just thought - like you said - it would be nice to be normal for once, and Malcolm doesn’t have anywhere to go so…”

“It sounds great,” Trish says again, unable to suppress the grin that’s spreading across her face, “I’m so glad you’re keeping your promise.”

“Promise?” Jessica frowns.

“When all this is over, let yourself be happy - that’s what I said wasn’t it?”

Grabbing a bottle she’s kept down the side of the couch, Jessica rolls her eyes, “yeah, okay. It works two ways though, Trish.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jessica takes a long drink from the bottle of Wild Turkey and then looks at her pointedly, like maybe her expression alone will give Trish a hint. It doesn’t.

“I don’t see you going out on dates, or hanging out with anybody but me…”

Trish’s smile is a thin line. She thinks of the last ‘date’ she had, the last person she’d let in. He’d tried to kill her. More than once, actually. She had let her guard down and he’d hurt her, just like everyone always did. He’d been the first in a long while, the first man she’d trusted, the first person she’d invited into her bed. It was supposed to just be fun, but it had been a mistake. She’d blocked Simpson’s number. She was better off alone. At least she had control of the situation then, at least she couldn’t be forced to feel that way again.

“I’ve decided it’s probably better for me to stay single for a while,” she shrugs, joining Jessica on the couch, “you’re all the company I need.”

*

On Christmas Eve, Trish’s door man turns her mother away. She’s glad this new guy she’s hired is more savvy than the last and she doesn’t even have to catch a glimpse of Dorothy’s retreating form. It gives her a sense of satisfaction, knowing that just once, her mother hasn’t been able to talk her way back in like she always does. There are very few people who can stand up to her, and Trish gives the doorman a Christmas bonus as ways of a thank you.

She can’t help but feel unsettled though. Just knowing she’s been in the vicinity of the apartment makes her feel sick.

That night, Trish lies awake in bed for hours, staring at the ceiling. It’s been a long time coming, she thinks, as she eventually crawls out of bed, and down to the room that used to be Jessica’s. The pile of boxes sits untouched against a wall and she sighs, sitting down and beginning to go through them again, file by file. This wasn’t how she had anticipated their first real Christmas going.

*

Malcolm arrives early, awkwardly wielding a bottle in a bag, and dressed in Christmas knitwear. Trish hasn’t made it out of the kitchen long enough to change out of her pyjamas.

“She seems stressed, is she stressed? I can… come back later if she’s stressed—“ he says to Jessica, quietly enough that he thinks Trish won’t hear.

“I am not stressed!” Trish calls from the kitchen, followed by a string of curse words and the sound of broken glass.

Jessica offers him a tight-lipped smile and accepts his gift, ushering him onto the couch, “sit here, stay out of the way and I’ll find glasses for the—“

“Oh that’s not—“  
 She pulls back the plastic to reveal a large bottle of… fancy vinegar.

“Oh,” Jessica says, raising her eyebrows, “uh, great.”

“I knew it was normal to bring something to these kind of things but I… I guess I panicked and picked up… that,” he wrings his hands together and offers a sheepish smile, “sorry.”

Trish is not a good cook. She’s alright at preparing her own food - salads and noodle dishes and sushi and stuff that does not involve going in the oven - but she is _not_ a good cook. There’s more take out menus in her drawers than cooking utensils. Her usually spotless kitchen is surrounded by chaos; three recipe books open and covered in scraps of food and splodges of sauce, pots and pans balanced all over the place, vegetables half chopped and scattered over the counters. She doesn’t drink - not anymore - but she feels like the cooking wine is calling her name as more and more things go wrong.

It isn’t really a surprise to anybody when the ham won’t defrost and the vegetables are burnt and she caves and calls for thai food instead.

It might not be the ‘normal’ Christmas she’d sold it as, but watching Jessica and Malcolm bicker for the last king prawn, sat around her cosy apartment, under a lop-sided Christmas tree, is everything she’d needed and more.

*

“I didn’t get a chance to give you this,” Trish says, standing in the doorway. Malcolm’s fast asleep on the couch, and Jessica’s lost her bed for the night. She’s sitting cross legged on the floor, staring out of the window at the stars, and there’s a bottle of Wild Turkey in her lap.

Jessica glances at her, takes in the package delicately wrapped, “I thought we decided against gifts. You know I don’t want you spending your money on me.”

Trish smirks, “open it.”

Jessica peels back the wrapping paper with only one half-hearted roll of the eyes, and her lips quirk into a smile that bubbles into a laugh, a foreign sound echoing in their quiet apartment, alien to both of them.

She holds out the pair of jeans and shakes her head.

“That pair are about to start walking off on their own,” Trish says, leaning over to press her lips to Jessica’s cheek, “Merry Christmas.”

“Yeah, Merry Christmas,” she says, chuckling to herself.

Trish hesitates, before slipping in beside her, pulling a blanket around her shoulders, and resting against Jessica’s side in a movement that feels as familiar as putting a coat on. Jessica’s body tenses, before relaxing against her.

“I’m sorry about dinner,” Jessica breathes.

“I’m sorry about your bed,” she gestures towards the couch, where Malcolm is snoring away.

She feels Jessica laugh, wrapping an arm around Trish, an act of intimacy that is unexpected but welcome. Trish always marvels at the way they fit together so perfectly, for two people who have spent so much of their lives apart, and together, and apart again. She rests her head on Jessica’s shoulder, stifling a yawn, and the ghost of Jessica’s lips on her forehead is so brief she wonders if she imagined it. She thinks she must have. 

Jessica doesn’t do intimacy.

*

“Why didn’t you tell me?!”

It’s four days after Christmas.

“There just never seemed like a good time. I was going to come to you once I had something solid. Solid evidence.”

Jessica scoffs, waving an arm at the mountain of boxes that have just arrived by courier, “and in the meanwhile, what, you were just going to let Dorothy have full control of the situation? I can’t believe you would let that bitch back in and not even—“ 

“I haven’t let her back in!”

Jessica takes her by the shoulders, and even though it’s gentle by her standards, it hurts. She must realise because her grip loosens, “do you not see, you’re giving her what she wants. You’re letting her have control over you again,” she lets go, “goddamnit Trish.”

Stumbling backwards, Trish wraps her arms around herself. She’s trembling. She can’t tell if it’s Jessica’s words - of course she’s right, she’s known what she’s doing all along but _damnit, it’s worth it if it helps Jess_ \- or the fact that the one person who she trusts more than anything else has still got the ability of hurting her, of rattling her so deeply.

By the time she’s stopped shaking, Jessica’s across the room, searching the cupboards for a bottle of… whatever. Trish presses her fingers to a headache building at her temple.

“You’re not going to find anything,” she says, quietly, “I can buy you—“

Jessica groans, slamming a cupboard so hard it splinters. She swipes a hand across the counter, and knocks everything from a bowl of fruit to a box of granola off the side.

“Jessica, please, you’re scaring me.”

All the colour drains from Jessica’s face and she stops still in the room, staring blankly at Trish, before suddenly snapping out of it, “shit. I’m sorry. I’m— shit.”

Trish moves towards her, wrapping her arms around Jessica’s body and holding her tight. Her heart is racing. For a long moment they just stand there, Jessica barely there, her fists clenched, Trish holding her like she’s afraid to let go. She hears Jessica mumble under her breath, catches a single street name.

When they pull apart, Jessica looks more herself.

“Okay?” Trish asks, holding her at arm’s length.

Jessica exhales, “yeah.”

She lets go, leaning back against the kitchen island, “I’m sorry. I know I should have told you, but I knew you’d freak out.”

“I thought killing him would end it, and we could get on with our lives, and it would be over but—“ Jessica shakes her head, “but you always have to be the hero, don’t you?”

“I wasn’t trying to be a hero. I just wanted to know the truth. Don’t you want to know? How you came to be… you? Don’t you deserve to know?”

“Not if it means I risk you,” she grinds out, sounding all too much like the same Jessica who was desperate to protect her from Kilgrave.

The same Jessica who left.

“I don’t need to be protected by you,” Trish says, sighing, “I thought after everything we’d been through, I’d proved that.”

Jessica looks at her, really looks at her like she’s seeing her for the first time. Trish watches the tenseness leave her body, her hands unclench. She knows she’s asking a lot of her, to ask her to leave behind something that’s been a deeply engrained part of her for as long as she’s known her, but she managed to leave once before, she managed to let Trish go once before. That isn’t what she wants now - of course it isn’t - but she does want to be trusted with her own decision making. She does want to be allowed to be the hero of her own story, just for once. She thinks Jessica must understand that, because she relents.

“Are you doing this for me, or because you want to know?” she says, her voice softer, “because I don’t give two shits about how - or why - I ended up… like this. But if it’s important enough to you to risk letting her back under your skin then… then I guess you have to do what you have to do.”

The question gives Trish pause, and she hesitates. She thought she knew the answer to that, that it would fly straight out of her mouth. She’d convinced herself she was doing this for Jessica. The only person who matters enough for her to let Dorothy back in. Jessica. But even when they were kids, hadn’t she wondered _why her and not me_ and could she be completely sure that that wasn’t why she was doing this? Hadn’t she been hung up on the idea of being a hero for as long as she could remember?

Trish sighs, pressing a hand to her forehead and letting her fingers run through the front of her hair, “I don’t know,” she admits, “I don’t know, okay?”

*

When the card arrives on December 31st, Trish doesn’t even look at it before scrunching it up and tossing it into the trash, along with the flowers it comes with.

The delivery man holds out his stylus for her to sign, and she does so with no hesitation, her fingers looping easily around the letters of her name, and a genuine smile coming to her lips as she hands it back.

“Return to sender, right?” he says, fixing the machine to his belt.

Trish eyes the boxes, stacked on a trolley, and ready to be taken away, every last shred of her mother’s existence in her apartment folded neatly away into manilla folders. Half of them haven’t even had the cellotape sliced through yet. 

“Yes,” she confirms, “thank you. And happy new year.”

He beams at her, as he wheels the packages away, “you too m’am.”

Trish closes the door as soon as he is out of sight, but leaves her hand flat against the wood for a moment longer, her chin to her chest, eyes closed. She finally lets go with a sigh, and pads over to the couch, to join Jessica.

“This won’t be the last of it,” she says, sitting down beside her friend.

Jessica hesitantly touches her knee, only for a second, before returning her hands to her own lap, to the glass of scotch there, “she’ll get the message,” she insists. 

Trish’s lips curl into a smile, her head finding it’s way to Jessica’s shoulder.

“You know your apartment’s been ready to go for at least a week, right?”

Jessica frowns, but doesn’t say anything.

“Admit it, you’re here because you like my company,” Trish teases, nudging her with her knee.

“Shut up,” Jessica mumbles, but Trish opens her eyes in time to see the smile that comes across her face, the way her cheeks go pink before she lifts her glass to her lips.


End file.
